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Guest Post: CTU Marks One-Year Anniversary Of Historic Strike

The following is from the Chicago Teachers Union reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the teachers' strike.

One year ago, nearly 30,000 public school educators took to the
picket lines to fight for the neighborhood schools their students
deserve. They also wanted to secure a strong labor contract and regain
respect for their profession. It was the first teachers strike in the
city’s history in 25 years and it took the city by storm. Led by Chicago
Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis, a former chemistry teacher,
the colorful demonstrations, which began September 10, 2012 and lasted
nine days, garnered national and international headlines as the “sea of
red,” flooded the streets of downtown Chicago in a unified show of
force.

The 2012 teachers strike was perhaps the first time in
the city’s history that a labor action of its kind garnered widespread
support from the public, including parents of Chicago Public School
(CPS) students. After weeks of dramatic labor negotiations, protests,
news conferences and rallies at the Board of Education teachers walked
away with one of the strongest labor contract in recent history, a more
unified workforce and the distinction of haven taken on a powerful,
media-savvy mayor and won.

For weeks leading up to the strike,
teachers and other school employees organized internally, trained its
leaders and began an outreach campaign for parents. Lewis and other CTU
leaders showed the public that a ‘good contract’ was paramount in
having high-quality, neighborhood schools. The union consistently pushed
the narrative that proved that poverty and severe racial disparities
had significantly impacted the school district. It released its
ground-breaking education platform, “The Schools Chicago’s Students
Deserve,” and advocated for reforms to the TIF program, additional
wrap-around services for students, quality school facilities and more
access to pre-school and kindergarten for low-income students. The
union pulled the curtain off the charter movement’s marketing campaign
and called on the school district to hold the privately-held, publicly
funded operations accountable for poor student performance and high
teacher turn-over rates.

The events leading to the strike were equally dramatic. On May 23rd,
more than 12,000 CTU members, parents and students took to the streets
of Chicago in a dynamic display of solidarity. Weeks later on June 11,
the CTU revealed that 90 percent of its members voted to give their
labor organization the authority to call a strike. A new state law had
required a 75 percent of all eligible CTU voters to vote in the
affirmative in order to provide strike authorization. The law proved
useless as the city’s public school educators responded to a barrage of
coordinated attacks from the mayor’s office, school CEO and the city’s
wealthy, out-of-town corporate school reform assassins. After all night
labor negotiations with the Board failed to produce an agreement, the
union called a strike at midnight on Sept. 10 and teachers, clinicians
and paraprofessionals walked the picket lines until they returned to the
classroom just over a week later; this despite, the mayor’s
unsuccessful attempt to have a court force an end to the strike.

“This
Union had survived an all-out attack on our very existence and our
ability to advocate for our members, our students and their communities
from a well-funded, well-orchestrated group of extremely wealthy people
who saw themselves as the authorities on education,” Lewis reflected.
“We were vilified in the press and on paid radio ads which attempted to
paint us as greedy and unknowledgeable. Our contractually agreed to
raises were stolen to goad us into acting rashly. Our members have been
laid off, terminated and publicly humiliated all in attempt to turn
public school educators and the public against us. None of it worked.”

Added
CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey, “The odds were not in our favor. The
state legislature had been conned by the corporate reformers into
passing Senate Bill 7 which was nothing more than an attempt to bust our
union and further decimate our public school system. Our members were
angry but worn out from fighting their principals over the years; and,
the public had not been given the whole story. People believed that
teachers were lazy and were to blame for everything that’s wrong in our
system. No one wanted a strike, but we had to exercise our right to
strike in order to strengthen our school district. This was bigger than
taking on the mayor or the Board—this was about fighting for our
students, and people finally understood that.”

For the first time
in CTU history, the union was able to secure a number of gains for its
members including, blocking the use of merit pay and standardized test
scores in teacher evaluations; a principal anti-bullying clause; freedom
to develop lesson plans; the hiring of art, music and physical
education teachers to create a “better school day” for students as the
year grew longer; significant cost of living increases; and short-term
disability leave for pregnant teachers. In addition, for the first time
in nearly two decades, Lewis, Sharkey and the other officers, Recording
Secretary Michael Brunson and Financial Secretary Kristine Mayle, were
re-elected by 80 percent of its members following a contract
negotiation. Previous contracts had led to past CTU leaders being
thrown out of office.

“We also gained international respect for
our resistance to the struggle for equitable education. We won the
right for professional autonomy in lesson plans; we won a more
reasonable evaluation system which was intended to use up to 50 percent
for student test scores,” Lewis said. “We gained the ability to finally
have due process in all discipline issues and the right to appeal
evaluations. We also won a real right for teachers to follow students
when schools close—which proved significant when CPS closed 50 schools
in a single year.”

Some critics believe the strike did little
beyond addressing the bread and butter issues impacting teachers.
However, the school district announced recently that last year’s test
scores went up; the longer school day was a success and the overall
quality of education improved in just a short year. This was due to the
visible and vocal advocacy of rank-and-file teachers, paraprofessionals
and clinicians who fought for change the conversation about public
education in the city.

While the CTU strike sparked similar labor
protests throughout the state, including about eight teacher strikes in
the region, the organization’s leaders say there is still much work to
be done. The group will continue to expose the contradictions in public
policy as well as broaden its base of support by working with parents,
students, clergy, community-based organizations and others.

“Since
the strike we have strengthened our ability to build power through a
significant change in the political landscape including increased voter
awareness, registration and candidate preparation,” Lewis said. “We’ve
done remarkable work towards equitable funding by changing the
conversation about revenue but now our focus is on securing fair taxes,
closing corporate loopholes and holding the unelected, unaccountable
school board to making budgetary decisions that do not destroy
traditional public schools.”